The International Documentary Festival in Paris, Cinéma du reel, celebrates its 40th anniversary with a retrospective ‘What is real? 40 years of thinking’. One of the films is Cinemafia. Rencontre 1. Jean Rouch parle avec Joris Ivens et Henri Storck shot on the beach of the Dutch village Katwijk in 1980. Also the competition for ‘Prix Joris Ivens’ (the Joris Ivens/Cnap Award of 7.500 euro) for first films will be presented.

The DEFA Foundation in Berlin released a new German DVD with Ivens-films in conjunction with the book Günter Jordan published about these films. DEFA already had launched a DVD with Song of the Rivers in and now presents The Wind Rose, Friendship Will Win and The Peace Cycle Tour Warsaw-Berlin-Prague 1952.

The long awaited book (in German) about Ivens and his East-German films, written by thé specialist in this field, Günter Jordan, has been published by the DEFA Foundation. The book describes in 680 pages the triumph in the 1950’s, the condemnation at the end of the 1960’s when Ivens became persona non grata in the GDR, until the resurrection of Ivens’ DEFA-films.

On 21 February a multimedia concert by the young Cologne music ensemble Electronic ID will be performed in the framework of the controversial exhibition ‘Gurlitt: Status Report Nazi Art Theft’ including Ivens’Rain (1929) in the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn (Germany). The theme of the concert is ‘Inside Exiles’

Paul Wendorf, a graduate of Columbia University, fought for 19 months in the XVth International Brigade at the Jarama and Brunete front, before he was killed in action. His cousin found letters which proof that he was filmed for Ivens’ The Spanish Earth in April-May 1937.

Chiara Bonfiglioli recently published her splendid book chapter about the DEFA filmproduction Die Windrose (1957, The Compass Rose) of which Joris Ivens was supervisor. ‘Die Windrose is a significant example of cross-border cooperation and provides important insights on the internationalists networks that developed after 1945 between Western-Europe, the Soviet Union and the Third World.’

Award winning Canadian documentary filmmaker Peter Davis presented his documentary Digging the Spanish Earth. Thanks to his interviews with Joris Ivens, Martha Gellhorn, Helen van Dongen and George Seldes, this film is of historical importance itself. Peter Davis also revisited locations in Madrid and Fuentedueña de Tajo where The Spanish Earth was shot in spring 1937.

Since six years Tian Wang (1976, Tongxiang 桐乡), is doing research for a dissertation about Joris Ivens and Modern China between 1938 and 1988. It was Régis Debray who advised her to study Ivens’ films in the framework of the theories of French historian Marc Ferro ‘Le film, l’agent et produit de l’Histoire’. For Tian Wang it is essential not only to study paper documents, but especially to meet and speak the people involved, both in China and the West.

Prof. Ariel Heryanto from Monash University in Melbourne lectured about Joris Ivens and Indonesia Calling in Djakarta. In his vivid presentation in Bahasa Indonesia (also a version with English subtitles is available) he discussed the tensed relationships between Indonesia, Australia and The Netherlands both back then and now. The opening sequence of Ivens' film showing an Australian society with diversity could be a model for their relationships. Since 22 October, when this film made by Jakarticus, was put on-line then thous ...

On 19 October a special ceremony at the Vietnam Film Institute (VFI) celibrated the transfer of solidarity films from The Netherlands to Vietnam. The films derive from the collections of the Medical Committee Netherlands-Vietnam and the Ivens Foundation. The ceremony, about which an item was broadcasted by national TV News, had been attended by Mr. Vuong Duy Bien, Vice Minister of Culture, Sport and Tourism, Mrs. Nienke Trooster, Ambassador of the Netherlands in Vietnam, Mr. Vu Nguyen Hung, Director of Vietnam Film Institute, ...

On 19 October the Vietnam Film Institute (VFI) in Hanoi is organizing a ceremony of the transfer of solidarity films from the Medical Committee Netherlands-Vietnam (MCNV) and the European Foundation Joris Ivens. Representatives of the Dutch Embassy, of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Vietnam, the director of the VFI , the director of the MCNV and the representative of the Ivens Foundation will be present when the 45 films will be handed over to the national film iinstute. Afterwards a study meeting will take place for ...

On 28 March the Award Ceremony of The Society of Cinema and Media Studies, the world's largest organisation devoted to the scholarly study of film and media, paid tribute to the best film scholarship of the previous year. Prof. Thomas Waugh received the best book award for his outstanding book about the complete film oeuvre of Joris Ivens. Maryse Elliott (Amsterdam University Press) and Giovanna Fossati (EYE Filmmuseum Amsterdam), editors of the Framing Film series, attended the presentation.

NAMU in Prague, the publishing house of the Academy of Arts, presented the Czech translation of André Stufkens book Joris Ivens. Filmmaker of the World (518 pages). This Czech book explores the content, production, meaning and reception of 21 Ivens films and was first published in Dutch and German in 2008 and 2009 as part of the DVD box. Especially a chapter about the relationship between Joris Ivens and the Czech Republic has been added, focussing on the documentary The First Years.

What are the greatest documentaries ever made? The international film magazine Sight&Sound publishes in the September issue 2014 a poll of 340 critics and filmmakers in the search for authoritative answers. In this list a remarkable number of 11 Ivens’films were voted.

Politics & Poetry

Name curator: Virginie FoloppeName artist: Virginie FoloppeTitle of the work you have chosen: Mister Freud it’s my pleasure to disarm youYear of production: Format:

"From small, from Goldorak and Candy, who passed following, I have the passion to reverse just to see."
"femininity is the whoring. The art of servility."
Virginie Despentes

Here are some excerpts from the conference on the femininity of Freud, the prelude to my video :
"the girl castration complex is also born at the sight of the genital organs of the opposite sex"
"the girl first considers his mutilation as an individual misfortune"
"she expresses, by a reaction against the pleasure the clitoris allows her to experience her dissatisfaction to have such a poor organ"
"modesty, virtue passes for specifically female and is, in reality, much more conventional one might think, had the original purpose, we believe, to conceal the defects of the genitalia"
"envy and jealousy play a more significant role in the spiritual life of the woman in the man's"
"in them the ability to sublimate instincts still lower"
"If you think that by giving so much importance to the role in the formation of femininity, the lack of a penis, I am prey to a fixed idea, and so I stay disarmed"

On the influence of the writings of Luce Irigaray, my video reverse the theory of penis envy from the definition of envy given by Melanie Klein when she writes: "The deterioration and devaluation are inherent in envy : a devalued object has no reason to be envied. "

Frigidity creativity, thought by Freud as a consequence of penis envy, is the result of vagina envy or the inhibition of a mental vagina, echoing the "mental dick" invented by Virginie Despentes.